Why we are on the cusp of an artificial intelligence revolution

Dr Damith Hearth will spoke about AI and robotics at Canberra’s first Pint of Science series held at King OMalleys Pub on May 25. Photo Jay Cronan Jay Cronan by Marc Benioff Over the last 30 years, consumers have reaped the benefits of dramatic technological advances. In many countries, most people now have in their pockets a personal computer more powerful than the mainframes of the 1980s. The Atari 800XL computer that I developed games on when I was in high school was powered by a microprocessor with 3,500 transistors; the computer running on my iPhone today has two billion transistors. Back then, a gigabyte of storage cost $US100,000 and was the size of a refrigerator; today it’s basically free and is measured in millimeters. Even with these massive gains,…